Different, but not the same: Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

 The Fantastic Four made their Marvel Comics debut in 1961. Next year marks the franchise's 65th anniversary, and Marvel finally released a movie based on it that actually worked.

In "First Steps", we get a capsulized recap of the team's earliest adventures, plus the reformation of their first foe, the Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), whose civilian name is given here as Harvey Elder, a homage to EC legends Harvey Kurtzman & Will Elder. Flash forward to the period of the movie, somewhere around 1965 or so (Wikipedia says 1964, but take that with a can of salt). Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian) and his wife, Sue (Vanessa Kirby), are expecting their first child. Problem is, this attracts the attention of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), who eats planets for a living. Galactus desires the child, and sends the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) to convey his request.

Yes, the Surfer is female this time. The writers flipped the traditional Surfer story, as it is Shalla-Bal who becomes Galactus' herald, instead of Norrin Radd. Predictably, Johnny (Joseph Quinn) finds her attractive, and decides he needs to convince her to call off Galactus' feast.

There are Easter eggs, including some you haven't heard about, including casting the 4 leads in Roger Corman's unreleased FF film in 1994, and a left-handed tribute to the FF's early animation history. The writers decided to skip past the oft-told origin of the FF.

Check the trailer:

Fittingly, Disney makes use of its acquisition of ABC to make it the network of choice for all things FF, a nod to the fact that the first cartoon aired on the network (1967-70). All that was missing from the space coverage was AI renditions of Jules Bergman and Frank Reynolds, and, ahhhhhhhhh, skip it!

Yes, it's cheesy at first, but it picks up the pace of drama, building to a powerful final act.

Rating: A-.